A Man With Style
Directed by Yuya Ishii (石井裕也), 2011, 110 minutes.
Review by Susan Meehan
Director Yuya Ishii is only 27 and has already released a number of films including last year’s hit, the hilarious and poignant Sawako Decides (川の底からこんにちは).
A Man With Style is a bittersweet family drama which has at its centre two fifty-something school friends – widower Junichi Miyata (Ken Mitsuishi –光石研), a blue-collar worker and Sanada (Tomorowo Taguchi –田口トモロヲ). Both are rather ordinary middle-aged men, far removed from any association with ‘style.’
They reminded me somewhat of ‘The Odd Couple,’ a 1970s film and TV series about Felix and Oscar, two divorced men sharing a Manhattan flat. One is a neat obsessive and the other far more casual resulting in comedy situations. Another film which sprung to mind was ‘Sideways,’ a 2004 feature directed by Alexander Payne centring on two college friends now 40-something men, on their week-long road trip.
Junichi Miyata is the more cantankerous and frustrated of the two in Ishii’s oeuvre. His wife died of cancer ten years ago, leaving him with an overriding memory of a silly but hilariously acted children’s song of bunnies she used to sing and two children who now, aged 18 and 19, hardly engage with him and are keen to move to university in Tokyo. He is short-tempered with them and nags them endlessly to no avail.
Miyata, suffering from stomach problems, is convinced he has cancer and no more than three months to live. He doesn’t want to worry his children, allegedly, but confesses his fears to Sanada during one of their regular drinking sessions. He melodramatically resorts to taking a funeral photo of himself with his cat and in another funny scene slides copies under his children’s bedroom doors much to their amusement – they have never seen a funeral photograph including a pet.
Having made an appointment to see the doctor, Miyata histrionically asks Sanada to look after his kids.
Sanada, the more carefree of the pair has taken to sporting a hat and comes across as the long-suffering friend. He has spent the last seven years devotedly looking after his dying father only to have his wife desert him. He never complains, has no children to worry about and is constantly reassuring and uplifting Miyata.
The polyp, it turns out, is benign and Miyata is told to go easy on the drink. The ensuing scene is hilarious, as he immediately gets drunk and unruly as he celebrates with Sanada. In an admission of his failure in life, he says, “I can’t even get cancer!”
With no money or status and with kids who ignore him, Miyata confesses to wanting to have style at the very least. Sanada assures him that he has bags of style and has done all he could for his kids, Toshiya and Momoko, brilliantly played by Ryu Morioka [森岡龍] and Jun Yoshinaga [吉永淳]. In the little time they have before the kids move to Tokyo to take up their places at private universities, Sanada does his best to ensure that all three connect.
As Sanada drops Toshiya and Momoko off in Tokyo, the sense of gratitude the children have for him is palpable and Toshiya tells his father not to worry about money as he will diligently continue working part-time in order to pay his costs in Tokyo.
The show of emotion and love in this film are sensationally subtle and almost Ozu-esque. There is no trace of sentimentality and there is no hugging, touching or kissing each other. The affection they feel for each other is shown through acts of selflessness.
All in all a very beautifully portrayed, well-scripted, good-natured, gentle film full of side-splitting scenes and tremendous acting; Mitsuishi playing Miyata, however, steals the show; you can’t get much more curmudgeonly!
This film was shown at the Premiere Japan 2011 event at the Barbican.